I plan to keep a log of development, design decisions and some solutions to problems I encounter as I make this game. It will be a hobby project until either a) it's clear that it's an unfeasible project or b) it's not at all fun to play.

After doing the Weekly Game Jam #150 with my brother, I really enjoyed working with the low-poly characters and assets, and thought I'd start a new project for fun, to learn about handling different types of data and design decisions. So - here is Baristar!

The idea came out of nowhere, but immediately I liked the idea of hiding information typically presented in the UI as elements of the world. So in Baristar your prepped coffees are lined up on the machine, your energy is represented by the food in the cabinet, the rounds left are tied to the time on the clock, and so on. It appealed to me for one main reason - I am terrible at designing UI! Most of the feedback I got about ESD related to how terrible it looked in general, which I can wholly understand, I had just hoped that the gameplay overcame that. But the menu for that game is just so basic, it really sets you up in a bad mood to play if you weren't already turned off by the cover images and so on.

Originally I began planning everything out using the golden ratio as I thought it might have some subliminal impact upon perception of the game, but due to different aspect ratios and trying to create a fairly natural looking area, I shelved that idea, at least for the time being.

I started Baristar out with the card system, about which I can go into further detail at a later time. The cards overall have been the most time consuming part - thinking of cards you could play for a long shift in a coffee shop is a lot harder than just adding in random magical animals or warriors, I think. The limitations are not only about gameplay but are restricted to a smaller environment. Then making the images for each card just took longer than I had planned for - if I had any artistic talent I'd probably illustrate them, but for something you'll look at once and then maybe never again, it isn't too big of a deal.

Getting the world to interact with the state of play has been by far the most enjoyable part. I really liked making the specials change, and the food! I had a blast doing that, for real. Even if the waffles do look a bit stale.

I'll look at recording some music for the game, and adding sounds. That I will probably work on slowly as I'll be using my phone to record the audio, and as I'm trying to create everything myself from scratch I can't just grab a bunch of coffee machine sounds from the net. I mean, I can, but I also just don't want to.

The tutorial will be a pretty big part of the game, as most card games need at least some instruction on how to play. Right not you can coast through the day fairly easily if you know what you're doing.

But that leads on to the best update that I suppose will come - the upgrade system. The plan for now is to start each new game (per save file) with the same beginner deck, and if you sacrifice a card, you can buy it back or have it remain lost. There will be new cards to buy, gold roast cards that are similar but more overpowered, as well as upgrades to things like the coffee machine, the marketing for the store, and extra decorations or upgrades you can buy. You could buy a home gym for the barista and he'll come to work as hench as a lean elephant.

Throughout all of this will be better animations and sequences for the characters, more natural movement around the scene, and various other things I feel like sticking in there when the thought comes to me.

Thanks for reading!

Cheers,

Dan